We weren’t sure it’d be possible, but last night’s new episode of Mad Men topped the previous week’s story, and now the actor who’s character played a central role is discussing what happened.

*spoiler warning*

In 5×12 “Commissions and Fees,” Lane (played by Jared Harris) hangs himself after Don forces him to resign following forging Draper’s signature and giving himself a bonus.

Vulture spoke to Harris about having to leave the show:

When did you first find out about Lane’s death? How did Matt Weiner break the news to you?

After the read-through for episode ten. He said he wanted to talk to me in his office. And, let me tell you, whenever someone says that to you, you know it’s not good news.

What did he say?

“I wanna talk to you in my office.” And then he offered me some extremely expensive brandy, and that’s how you know you’re fucked. Yep. But there was talk around base camp from the pre-shoots that something was gonna happen to somebody. We kind of felt it in the air.

Yeah. It was foreshadowed all season long —

Well, we hadn’t even got to that. We weren’t even shooting yet and there was a feeling about it. Yeah. [Matt] likes to shakes things up. He likes to pull surprises and stuff like that.

Vulture also asked why he thinks show creator Matt Weiner chose Lane to kill:

I think one of the reasons was because the character was a popular character, people liked the character and it would have a really big impact. And then also, it felt right in terms of the idea of the guy being somewhat marginalized. He didn’t have a lot of political allies within the company. You know, it’s not a sexy job, being the guy who keeps the books and [keeps] the ship on course. He obviously provides a service to the company because he takes Sterling Cooper and turns it into an extremely profitable company, and he sees them through those difficult times in terms of keeping the company solvent. But no one likes someone who says no, so I don’t think they would look on him as being a very popular person within the office. And also, it’s one of those things where no one really knows how that works. It’s sort of taken for granted by the creative types, and it’s either something that they miss tremendously or they don’t notice at all. Who knows what happens next?

Were you surprised to see Lane go so far as to kill himself? We thought that he would’ve resigned, at worst.

The season finale airs Sunday, June 10 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on AMC!